The Alliance for School Choice just launched a campaign to recruit 10,000 school choice supporters online to help build a grassroots movement. More motivated bodies are definitely needed in this fight, so check out the website:
www​.let​par​entschoose​.org

Over at TPM Cafe, Ed Kilgore writes about conservatives’ attitude toward president-elect Barack Obama:

it’s hard to avoid the impression that they truly think this temperate man pursuing Clinton-style centrist policies is determined to enact “socialized medicine”

Not being a conservative myself, I’ll not try to explain any of the actually wacky things they might think about the man.

However, if conservatives believe that Barack Obama is determined to enact socialized medicine, they are spot-on.

In fact, I challenge Kilgore (or anyone else) to read this paper and then argue that Obama does not support socialized medicine.

Op-Ed: “There’s Nothing Wrong with a ‘Big Two,’ ” by Daniel J. Ikenson in the New York Daily News

The “Big Three” auto producers — Ford, Daimler-Chrysler and General Motors — want the public to believe their industry faces an existential threat. It doesn’t. They want the public to believe they are innocent victims of circumstances beyond their control. They’re not. They want the treasury secretary to authorize a fresh $25 billion bailout for the industry and the President-elect to pledge support for their parochial cause…

…The auto industry doesn’t need a bailout. It needs a shakeout.

Article: “We Blew It,” by P.J. O’Rourke in The Weekly Standard

None of this is the fault of the left. After the events of the 20th century–national socialism, international socialism, inter-species socialism from Earth First–anyone who is still on the left is obviously insane and not responsible for his or her actions.…The financial crisis that is hoisting us on our own petard is only the latest (if the last) of the petard hoistings that have issued from the hindquarters of our movement. We’ve had nearly three decades to educate the electorate about freedom, responsibility, and the evils of collectivism, and we responded by creating a big-city-public-school-system of a learning environment.

Op-Ed: “A Repudiation, But of What?” by Michael D. Tanner in the Fort Worth Star Telegram

To suggest that in electing Barack Obama and a Democratic congressional majority, voters were choosing big government and liberalism over small government and conservatism would imply that either the Bush administration, the current Republican congressional leadership, or, for that matter, John McCain, actually supported smaller government.

But even before the Wall Street bailout, President Bush spent money in a way that would make any liberal proud.

Podcast: “What’s Good for GM?” featuring Daniel J. Ikenson

In the course of making his argument that Cato frequently makes counterproductive alliances of convenience (from a strict libertarian perspective, anyway) with corporate special interests, Matthew Yglesias writes at Cato Unbound:

The free-market case for a revenue-neutral carbon pricing scheme seems fairly impeccable to me. But instead of organizing its climate change efforts around seeking to ensure that any future carbon pricing plan be as close to revenue neutral as possible, Cato prefers to steadfastly defend the rights of industry to unload air pollution unimpeded.

I’m not sure how one might define a “free market case” for a revenue-neutral carbon pricing scheme, but the economic case for it would require evidence that (1) the benefits of the tax shift would exceed the costs, and (2) that the proposed tax shift is a less expensive means of addressing climate change harms than other possible remedies.

Regarding (1), the argument is intuitively plausible but is, in fact, quite problematic. And you don’t need to be a Cato libertarian to come to this conclusion. You will find great skepticism about the claim that a tax shift would on balance prove economically positive from economist Lawrence Goulder (a supporter of carbon taxes, by the way). This seminal piece from economists A. Lans Bovenberg and Ruud de Mooij is also good. As energy economist Stephen Smith observes after surveying the relevant economic literature on eco-tax shifts:

Ecotaxes are likely to involve distortionary costs at least as high as those involved in raising equivalent revenues through existing taxes. If the question is posed whether we would choose to use energy taxes, in preference for existing taxes on labour and other bases, in the absence of any environmental benefits, then the answer is almost certainly that we would not. Energy taxes would be likely to involve just as much distortion of the labour market as income taxes, and at the same time distort the commodity market. Only if there are expected to be environmental gains can the use of environmental taxes be justified, and the case for ecotax reform must be made primarily on the basis of the environmental gains that would result.

Read that last sentence again.

So, are the benefits that might flow from a carbon tax (defined at the monetarized value of the temperature reductions that might follow) greater than the costs of the same? Energy economist Richard Tol’s review of the published economic literature suggests that the monetarized damages that follow from a ton of carbon emissions at the margin (if mean estimates of future climate change from the IPCC are to be believed) likely works out to about $2. Hence, if a carbon tax is set above $2 dollars, it will may very well deliver more social costs than benefits.

Regarding (2), Indur Goklany makes a strong case that adapting to climate change and applying targeted public policy initiatives to directly address subsequent harms is much cheaper – and much more effective – than a policy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, Goklany points out that this conclusion holds even if we accept the worse-case scenarios spun-out in the Stern Review on the economics of climate change.

Of course, Matthew Yglesias is free to disagree with the above. But the case for a revenue-neutral carbon pricing scheme is not “fairly impeccable” … from an economic perspective, anyway. There are ample grounds for disagreement … and that’s true even if we ignore the debate about the underlying science.

Government equity investment or rescue of the broader (non-financial) economy is a mistake. It will damage economic efficiency in the long-term by diluting the value of private shareholders and reduce incentives for cost cutting and product quality innovations.

Of course, the current focus is not on long-term incentives but on how to shorten and moderate the current economic recession. The constantly changing mix of initiatives from the Treasury suggest:

1. A lack of knowledge/​vision about what to do–so they’re throwing money at everything that moves in the hope that something will work. These ex-Goldman Sachs personnel that make up the Paulson team are probably not economists–and certainly not good ones. The majority are probably MBAs with little understanding of how things really work in the economy. They probably have a microeconomic firm-specific orientation and management skills that are unsuited for their current responsibilities. If I’m wrong, I’d be very surprised. If I’m right, it’s showing.

2. An attempt to assuage competing political constituencies and provide benefits to potential future supporters.

3. An attempt to distribute wealth to those people/​firms that the next Congress and president won’t support–by tying their hands through government ownership of firms.

4. A deliberate and cynical attempt to damage the economy even more to make life difficult for the Obama administration.

I think # 4 is cynical on my part. But although unlikely, it is not impossible given how polarized the political atmosphere was during the GW Bush presidency.

Broad government involvement in private firms to solve the economic crisis is a dangerous turn. The shareholders in these firms took risks and should bear the consequences of their decisions. If they sink, the economy may recover faster as other businesses are created over time in non-housing and less energy intensive sectors. Supporting existing, inefficient firms run by poor decision makers is likely to prolong the recession because keeping those firms and their managers afloat won’t help to restore market confidence. And, this policy will encourage future investors/​managers to take even riskier decisions under expectations of yet another government bailout if they fail. Finally, government debt-financed wealth injections are worsening the nation’s finances–we’re already swimming in huge and unpayable entitlement obligations to a growing number of retirees, disabled, poor, and the sick.

The government purchase of securitized auto loans is probably intended to insure auto company creditors, who would otherwise become bankrupt and prolong the credit-flow freeze. It’s another source of bad assets on bank and non-bank financial firm portfolios that’s contributing to the market failure in that sector. I’m more sympathetic to the original TARP idea than government officials seem to be. That way the government’s involvement in the private sector will be limited and it will remove bad assets from their balance sheets–which are responsible for the pervasive uncertainty among financial market players and is causing the credit freeze. But under TARP, government officials don’t get to choose whom to support–they must buy up assets from whoever is currently holding them–be it domestic or foreign firms, “friends and relatives” or “strangers and enemies.”

Kudos to Clarence Page for hitting President-elect Barack Obama on school choice.

Obama’s daughters are currently enrolled in a private school. The Obamas are likely to send them to one of the more expensive and exclusive private schools in DC. But Obama opposes private school choice programs that would allow parents with smaller incomes and less power to find good schools for their own children.

Page asks Obama, “what about the kids left behind in failing schools?”

Unfortunately, Obama has followed the lead of most other black politicians and decided that the poor black (not to mention white, Hispanic, Asian, etc.) kids left behind can wait for another 5, 10, or 15-year plan to improve the public schools.

It’s a sad political fact that black leaders are as strongly opposed to school choice as black parents are strongly supportive of it.

A 2001 study from the Joint Center Political and Economic Studies found 70 percent of black elected officials oppose vouchers while “in the black population, there was what can accurately be described as overwhelming support for vouchers (approximately 70 percent) in the three youngest age cohorts” under age 51. Support for vouchers in the inner-city can hit 77 percent according to research conducted by Terry Moe.

There is a massive and problematic disconnect on education policy between the average black voter on one side and the Democratic Party and black leaders on the other. It’s nice to see a liberal pundit point this out.

Op-Ed: “The Voters’ Message to Republicans,” by Michael D. Tanner on Cato​.org

Given a choice between two “big-government parties,” voters will choose the Democrats every time.

Video: Daniel J. Ikenson discusses an auto industry bailout on CNN

Where is it written in scripture and in stone that we need to have a big three?…If one of them goes down, the industry will be doing much better.

Article: “Worse Than Bush?,” by Ted Galen Carpenter in National Interest Online

Although it is hard to imagine, Obama’s foreign policy could prove even worse than that of the Bush administration.

Article: “Save Parents the Lecture,” by Neal McCluskey in Edu​ca​tion​news​.org

Are there things that parents could do to improve education? Sure, but they don’t need… Barack Obama lecturing them on getting involved in their kids’ learning. What they need is real power over their kids’ education. What they need is school choice—but that’s something for which Obama refuses to use his bully pulpit.

Podcast: “The New Face of the GOP,” featuring Michael D. Tanner